Physicians for Human Rights
July 17, 2000
Open Letter to the World Diamond Congress
Antwerp, Belgium
To whom it may concern:
We the undersigned human rights, religious, development, humanitarian, and consumer organizations call upon the international diamond industry to announce immediate, practical measures to end the international trade in conflict diamonds. We are dismayed that despite clear evidence that international trade in rebel-controlled diamonds has ignited, fueled, and sustained cruel conflicts in Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for many years, to date neither the diamond industry nor diamond importing governments have taken actions to successfully limit or end that trade.
Notwithstanding the promises of leading companies within the diamond industries that they do not deal in conflict diamonds, sales of such diamonds mined in rebel-controlled territory in Angola, the Congo, and Sierra Leone continue to the present day. Diamonds from these areas are laundered through such countries as Liberia, Togo, Zimbabwe, Congo-Kinshasa, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso; and then they are admitted to major cutting and export centers with few questions asked.
We are deeply concerned that Americans have unwittingly subsidized violence in Sierra Leone and Angola through their diamond purchases. According to U.S. State Department sources and independent experts, smuggled and illicit conflict diamonds may amount to as much as ten to fifteen percent of the $50 billion worth of diamond jewelry sold internationally every year. The United States accounts for sixty-five (65) percent of world diamond jewelry sales, which likely includes a significant portion of those conflict diamonds on the market. Thus, American purchases of diamonds provide substantial resources to insurgent forces which mine and/or steal rough stones, providing enormous profits to the diamond industry who export, cut, and sell these conflict diamonds.
Diamond smuggling has permitted the RUF in Sierra Leone and UNITA in Angola to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for weapons and equipment, transforming these insurgencies into formidable fighting forces that have wreaked devastation on their countries. The human cost of wars fueled by diamonds has been extraordinarily high: in Sierra Leone 75,000 have been killed since 1991; in Angola 500,000 have died during the return to civil war in the past decade.
The thousands of American citizens affiliated with our organizations will not knowingly subsidize war and violence in Africa through the purchase of conflict diamonds. Because the diamond industry has failed to impose any realistic or practical controls on its own members, failed to support and maintain a legitimate market that could marginalize the market in conflict diamonds, and failed to initiate a comprehensive, forgery-proof system for identifying, marking, and certifying the country of extraction from which it buys, cuts, and exports, then neither our members nor anyone else can exercise ethical choices when buying diamonds.
Important players in the diamond industry have very recently announced a number of positive steps, including the threat by De Beers, the Diamond High Council, the Israeli Diamond Exchange, and India to ban any member who knowingly trades in diamonds obtained from rebel movements in Africa. We are also aware that De Beers, which controls upwards of sixty percent of the world diamond industry, promised in March that all of its stones were conflict-free. But such threats and promises, while welcome, are largely symbolic unless the diamond industry, in collaboration with diamond producing, cutting, exporting, and importing countries, establishes a transparent, legitimate system that can force the trade in conflict stones out of business, or greatly reduce its profits.
Such a system will require a comprehensive, global system of transparency for establishing origin, legitimate export and import centers, customs and excise regimen in importing countries, international inspection of diamond packets, and other measures proposed by the Working Group on African Diamonds which met in Luanda in June 2000.
We support the Luanda recommendations and welcome the process that has been set in motion for an international ministerial meeting in September. However, the establishment of a comprehensive global system for the mining, export, manufacture and sale of legitimate diamonds will take time, and it may well be years before such a system dries up the flow of money and weapons to insurgents in Sierra Leone and Angola. But the diamond industry can take immediate action to deprive rebel movements of resources by identifying (or marking) diamonds or packets of diamonds and providing forgery-proof certificates of origin/legitimacy, without which no stone (or packet of stones) can be cut, exported, or sold.
The diamond industry has, to date, refused to initiate a system for assuring the legitimacy of the diamonds it buys, cuts and exports. It is past time to do so. We call upon the industry to announce that 1) it will no longer admit rough stones to cutting or export centers that do not have legitimate, internationally sanctioned certificates of origin from reputable diamond producing countries or government-controlled areas within diamond producing countries. 2) that the industry will not buy, or admit to exporting or cutting centers any diamonds or packets of diamonds that originate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, RUF-controlled Sierra Leone, or UNITA-controlled Angola or that have been transshipped through Liberia, Togo, Congo, Burkina Faso, or the Ivory Coast.
These actions could help in the short run, and will indicate the diamond industry’s good faith as a partner in longer-term actions that are needed. We urge you to announce these measures at your meeting in Antwerp on July 17.
Sincerely,
Leonard S. Rubenstein
Executive Director
Physicians for Human Rights
Serge Duss
Director, Public Policy and Government Relations
World Vision
Vicki Ferguson
Director of Outreach and Education
Africa Policy Information Center
Gay McDougall
Executive Director
International Human Rights Law Group
Beverly Lacayo
Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa
North American Province
Reverend Phil Reed
Justice and Peace Office
Missionaries of Africa
Erin McCandless
Director
Cantilevers
Edward W. Stowe
Legislative Secretary
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Alan Graham
Chief Executive Officer
Air Serve International
Stephen G. Price, Director
Office of Justice and Peace
Society of African Missions
Daniel Hoffman, Africa Executive
Africa Office, Global Ministries
United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ
Nina Bang-Jensen
Director
Center for International Justice
Larry Goodwin
Executive Director
Africa Faith and Justice Network
Daniel Volman
Director
Africa Research Project
Ezekiel Pajibo
Facilitator
Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA)
The Africa Fund
United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
Jennifer A. Stewart
Manager, Product/Program Development
Citizens Development Corps
Charmain Gooch, Director
Alex Yearsley, Campaigner
Global Witness
Africa Office of Global Ministries
United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ
Daniel Hoffman, Area Executive for Africa
Leon P. Spencer
Executive Director
Washington Office on Africa
Merle Bowen and WIlliam Martin
Co-Chairs
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
Gail R. Carson
Director
Relief and Food Security Programs
David Mozer
Chairperson
Washington State Africa Network
American Committee on Africa
Roney A. Heinz
International Director
Canaan Christians Fellowship Fund
William Goodfellow
Executive Director
Center for International Policy
Peter Vandermeulen
Paul Kortenhoven
Christian Reform Church of North America
Abdul Lamin
Coalition for Democracy in Sierra Leone
Rob Williams
International Development Manager
Concern Worldwide – U.S.
Margaret Zeigler
Deputy Director
Congressional Hunger Center
Stanley W. Hoise
Chief Executive Officer
Counterpart International, Inc.
John Kvcij
Chairman of the Board
Friends of Liberia
Billie Day
Friends of Sierra Leone,
Loretta Bondi
Advocacy Director of the Arms and Conflict Program
The Fund for Peace
Lynn Sauls
International Aid
Kakuna Kerina,
Director, Africa Program
International League for Human Rights
Kathryn Wolford
President
Lutheran World Relief
Kathleen McNeely
Program Associate
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Terry Sawatsky
Co-director for Africa
Mennonite Central Committee
Bill Akin
Coordinator of Non-Violent Education Programs
Mid-South Peace and Justice Center
Rev. Kevin S. Kanouse, Bishop
Rev. Mark B. Herbener, Bishop Emeritus
Northern Texas – Louisiana Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Jack Marrkand, Executive Director
Partners for Development
Gordon Clark
Executive Director
Peace Action Education Fund
Lionel Rosenblatt
President
Refugees International
Cecelia Gugu Vilakazi
Editor and Publisher
SIMUNYE Newsletter
Maureen Healy
Africa Liason
Society of St. Ursula
Mark Harrison
General Board of Church and Society
United Methodist Church
Susie Johnson
Director, Public Policy
United Methodist Women
Roger Winter
Executive Director
U.S. Committee for Refugees
Jeredine Williams
West African Women’s Crusade
for Peace and Democracy
Mary Diaz
Executive Director
Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children
Meredith Tax, President
Women’s World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development
(Women’s WORLD)
Clive Calver
President
World Relief
Arne Bergstrom
World Relief
Rev. Seamus P. Finn, OMI
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate